Top 6 Social Media Predictions for the Year 2014

Undoubtedly, people are busy in planning new year celebration with family and friends. But, they will certainly look back to calculate the experiences that they had in the previous year. If we discuss the this year in terms of social media, then we can sum it up in a few words including content, real-time marketing and mobile. More advancements are coming and the technology is changing quickly.

In this scenario, it has become really difficult to decide that how and where the social media efforts should be spent. In order to overcome this situation, you can have a look at the top 6 social media predictions for the year (2014).

How short-form video brings a shift towards visual storytelling

It is true that the idea of telling the story of a business via social media started in the end of 2013. But, this process of storytelling through short-form video will become more common in 2014. This is a platform to recite a deeper story, which will be easy to follow on Instagram’s 15-second video and Twitter’s Vine app. Here, you can create a short-form content and share it easily. You can comprehend the entire process that how to create such content and how user get it in a hassle-free manner. It’ll be exciting to see how video further evolves as these digital-savvy, video loving workers begin to take up the reins in businesses.

Businesses embrace fan engagement

It is all about fan engagement and content marketing. Fandom is defined as a sub-culture of crazy fans, who form the overall customer base. These are the fans, who have much to do with your marketing and advertise your brand to other people as well.

In 2014, people are likely to identify as well as embrace fandom. Business people will connect and provide the tools to fan that enable them to spread the word in the whole world.

Importance and size of Google+ will keep growing in 2014

According to the Google’s data, there are around 300 million monthly active users on Google+. Besides it, Twitter & Facebook have around 232 million and 1.2 billion monthly active users. Google+ has not only become a famous social media platform, but its integration with Google Authorship & Google search results will make it bigger in 2014. It clearly shows that if business people are active on Google+, they can improve the search engine optimization (SEO) for their business.

A better focus on the content

Most of the business people know the importance of content and they are focused on creating the best content for their website. Keeping the importance of content in mind, a number of businesses have started embracing content marketing. In 2014, it will be less important to put out more content, but it is about to become more essential to put relevant content on the social channels.Brands will begin to take hold of the idea that by using social media channels to seed its onsite content, it’s pushing that content out to a warm, primed audience that’s already interested in what it has to say.

Brands are required to ask themselves which social media channel is used by the customers and how they can make this channel unique for them. Marketers are crying out to understand what’s being said about brands on Google+, as well as where and by whom, and would also love more flexibility when it comes to which tools they use to schedule their valuable content.Considering this fact, they will be able to create contextual content, which is relevant on that insight.

More businesses will favor paid advertising

The recent changes that have been made to the Facebook’s News Feed algorithm decide that what people see and what they do not see in the News Feed. It means that Facebook fans will be able to see less and less of the content. It further limits the reach of most of the organic posts. There are so many brands that use Facebook to promote their brands. Now, paid advertising will become a critical part of the social strategy of their businesses, if they really want their content to be seen by more and more fans.

Twitter is also increasing its paid advertising options. Social advertising has an especially bright future thanks its close ties to the mobile phone industry. Social ads work better on mobile devices than traditional ads because they take up less space and fit small screens better. Paid advertising will certainly be an essential part of your promotional plan in 2014, if you want your potential customers to access you on social platforms.

Snapchat

While I think Twitter has the most growth potential it is hard to argue that Snapchat is right on its heels. In fact, I could make a strong argument that Snapchat will grow much faster than Twitter in 2014. We have all read the stats, 350 to 400 million pictures sent daily. Facebook offered $3 billion; Google offered $4 billion. Every child in high school snaps their friends. College students are using Snapchat more than they text. It is staggering that this has happened in less than 24 months.

If you want to know why Snapchat is so popular look no further than Lauren Sutton’s article . There is nothing more basic than Snapchat. You take a photo, send it to friends and it self-destructs in 10 seconds. There is only room for about 40 characters of text. Most people don’t even use the text at all as they draw on the screen. If you can take a picture and color in a coloring book you can use Snapchat like a pro. Formatting is not an issue. You definitely don’t have to worry about hashtags or your mom or dad seeing your photos. These are all features that have caused every person under the age of 23 to go crazy for Snapchat.

Conclusion

These were the best 6 predictions regarding social media for the year 2014. All these predictions will help business people to promote their business in the present year more strongly.

About the Author: Andrew Clarke is a well-known face from EmailChopper. He is a talented social media expert and also writes informative blogs that focus on the best ways to promote business online.